At this point, it’s probably pretty obvious I’m a gamer, but FFXIV: Realm Reborn is a very pretty game – and that’s an understatement.

Even if you just watch the first 20 seconds, you can see how much effort Square Enix put into lighting the environment and the difference it makes. And this is just outside of one city. The feeling of the environment changes during various times of the day and even during various weather circumstances. It might not look all too realistic, but for a massively multiplayer online game, it really is impressive.

And there are obvious lighting choices to indicate various areas of the game. The dungeons have soft glow lights coming from the rocks that emphasize it’s surrealism, and the forests/beach areas have more natural lighting versus areas with more advance technology have more futuristic lighting. Then you have different lighting setups for indoors – via windows or fire. And then there are all sorts of things in the environment that realistically emit light and not, which makes it that much interesting.

Then you have the lighting for the boss fights that have more radical effects based on the boss and the interaction of all the lighting and effects that come off of players when they’re performing actions. Not only that, but lighting is also used as a guide for players in dungeons and boss fights.